


the air went out when you came in (honey, welcome to the South)

by jadeddiva



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:55:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeddiva/pseuds/jadeddiva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Willas likes mornings, sweet tea, and Sansa Stark first thing in the morning, when she brushes her teeth next to him at the sink and he can count the freckles on her shoulders.  He thinks that he’s especially pathetic at the best of times, but he’s really surprised to find how pathetic he is at the worst. </p><p>Willas X Sansa, Southern Gothic AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the air went out when you came in (honey, welcome to the South)

**Author's Note:**

> This can be considered an outtake from the Southern Gothic AU I'm all about in my dreams these days. Basic understanding is that Sansa is Margaery's college roommate.

Willas likes morning.  He’s an early riser, always has been since he was a boy, and it’s the only time none of the women in this house seem to be awake.  As a result, he gets unlimited time in the bathroom.  But it’s not like he wants to soak in the tub with one of Margaery’s over-perfumed bath bombs or read the entire _News and Register_ in one sitting; it’s more that he likes his privacy and he likes being able to take his sweet time maneuvering himself in and out of the shower with his bad leg.

Some days are easier than others.  There seems to be a correlation between how long he stays in there with how well muscles are willing to cooperate with him.   Because of his injury (and because of the pain) the muscles stay tensed or something like that, and so it’s with heat and care that he un-tenses each more.   In those moments, he’s almost pain-free and it’s almost a blessing.

Almost.

More often than not, his post-shower moment of golden pain-free existence is ruined by the knocking (albeit, quiet knocking) of Margaery’s friend.  There’s only one bathroom for the three rooms at the end of the hall and Sansa seems to rise early.

He doesn’t really begrudge it much, because Sansa never kicks him out of the bathroom.  At some point, when the house was modified in one of the many modernizations of this Greek Revival monstrosity, a separate room was made for the toilet and double-sinks were added, so most of the mornings of her stay he’s been able to shave while she brushes her teeth and combs out her hair.  He always makes sure to leave quickly, even though she tells him in her own quiet way that he doesn’t need to rush.

He likes to look at Sansa when she’s not paying attention, in the bathroom and out of it.  She’s startlingly beautiful in a way that you don’t really see in the Reach.  She’s got the palest skin he’s ever seen (probably because she puts on SPF 500 or whatever, though there are some freckles on her shoulders that he finds really cute).  Every girl in 50 miles has sun-kissed hair and sun-kissed skin and wears dresses in bright colors and too much eye liner and Sansa wears white and grey and black and one time blue, he tries to remember, long dresses and skirts that make her look even taller than she is.  Her hair is straight, and the brightest red imaginable and sometimes when he’s drifting off to sleep he thinks about her hair, and how bright it would be on a pure-white pillow.

Willas doesn’t feel at all bad about his mind’s ramblings, because he finds Sansa more than just beautiful.  She’s the calm to Margaery’s storm, quiet and aloof and snarky to Margaery’s emotional, impetuous wreck.  He’s glad that she’s got someone like Sansa in her life, a shy voice of reason, because Margaery is good at the charm but sometimes in the moment her common sense is lacking.

Sansa’s always been nice to him, even though he just sits and listens instead of teases her like Garlan does, trying to mimic a Northern accent she doesn’t have (her mom is from the Riverlands, she tells them, she’s spent summers in the South) and watch as she teases them all – Margaery, Garlan, even Loras who doesn’t like it when girls tease. 

Sometimes, when no one else is around, he’ll ask her polite questions which she’ll answer politely, something tangible to learn more about her, because when he heads back to Oldtown this fall and thinks about summer, it’s going to be filled with images of freckles on shoulders and that look she gets on her face when Sansa’s lips turn up just so, when she’s about to deliver the sassiest comment he’s ever heard.

Willas thinks that he’s especially pathetic at the best of times, but he’s really surprised to find how pathetic he is at the worst.

Margaery teased him about it once, when she saw him staring at Sansa too long.  “Why don’t you talk to her?” she said, bumping her hip into his gently, resting her arm on his shoulder. 

“About what?” he asks with a shrug.  “I’m far too old for her to take me seriously.”

Margaery smiled, and flipped her hair over her shoulder.  “Maybe you should ask her first.  You never know what us girls are into unless you just _ask_.”

Willas rinses his mouth and spits the toothpaste into the sink.  He needs to stop letting his mind wander about things that are not possible.

There is a knock on the door, soft and steady.

Willas silently curses himself.  He hasn’t had a chance to shower yet, is wearing nothing but a towel around his waist (his robe was in the wash, he was too lazy to find it in his room this morning).  He shudders, embarrassed, but he opens the door anyway.

Sansa is standing here, wearing a tank top and a pair of indecently short shorts, her hair tumbling down around her shoulders.  Her eyes widen when she sees him there, and embarrassment overcomes him.  He knows that he is red from his cheeks down his chest, but he tries to be light and carefree about it.

“Sorry,” he tells her, “running a little slow this morning.”  The irony is not lost on him, and he hates himself for trying to be light and carefree when he is most definitely not.

“It’s not a problem,” Sansa says, her voice still husky with sleep.  She gestures to the door that leads to the toilet.  “Can I just...?”

“Yes, sure,” he says, stepping awkwardly out of the way.  Her hip brushes against his hip. He can smell her shampoo, fruity and sharp in his nostrils.

The minute she closes the door to the other room, he steps in the shower, throws his towel over the rod, and turns the spray on full-blast.  The cold makes him gasp but he doesn’t care – he wants it to banish all the horrible awful thoughts he’s having about his sister’s best friend that just will not leave him, regardless of all the cold showers he takes every morning for this very same reason.

The water slowly warms up, and he brushes his hair back away from his face (Mom keeps telling him to get it cut but he doesn’t want to just yet, because he’ll have to when he goes back to law school and Sansa told him that she liked it and he is really thirty going on fifteen, not some big-shot third year law student). The water cools down again, and he knows Sansa is done, will be crossing through the bathroom on her way out shortly.   Wlillas takes another deep breath, leans his head against the cool tile and sends silent prayers upward for this misery to be ended shortly.

The shower curtain moves suddenly, and Sansa slips into the shower, so incredibly close to him because this shower now seems so very small.

He watches the water splash against her, making her hair dark against the incredible paleness of her skin.  Her eyes are steely, looking at him in such a way that he can’t break contact, can’t look away from her face.

Every nerve ending in his body seems to be alive in this moment, as the water warms up and Sansa reaches out for him.  She cups his face in her hand, and it’s like something snaps between them.  She surges into him as he pulls her towards him, lips crashing together.  She tastes like toothpaste and feels like heaven beneath his wandering hands, one on her hip and the other on her back.  Her body fits against his so very well, and he doesn’t want to think too hard.  He does want to feel her breasts, however, and when she moans, she undoes all that hard work the cold shower did moments earlier.

“Sansa,” he says, breaking away.  Water pours onto his face and he wipes it away, watching her instead.  “Sansa, I – “

“I like you,” she says, her fingers resting on his chest.  He covers her hands with his.

“Why?” he asks.  “We barely talk.”

“Every morning,” she says.  “I started getting up early so we could talk every morning.  You’re so quiet around the others and I  - “

Willas thinks about all the conversations he had brushed off as inconsequential to her, the moments he doesn’t always think about, the conversations they have first thing in the morning before he’s had his coffee. He keeps them hidden in his heart because he thought they only mattered to him, not to her too.

“I like you too,” he says.

Sansa smiles.  She reaches up to run her fingers through his hair, and then pulls him down for another kiss.

Sansa’s body feels ridiculously good pressed against his.  He leans against the wall to free up some pressure from his leg, and she takes the opportunity to reach down for him.  Her fingers grasp around him, thumb rubbing over the tip, and his hips buck forward.  Sansa bites his lip in response.

He trails his hand up from her waist to her breast, cupping the weight before rubbing her nipple between his fingers.  She moans in his mouth again, her hand stilling.  He keeps rubbing as she arches her back.  His lips make a pathway up her neck to her ear.  He tugs at her earlobe with his teeth.

“This would be better on the floor, darling,” he tells her, licking her jawline.  She shudders under him, but it could also be due to the fact that his other thumb is tracing her center now, making her hips buck up to meet his.

Sansa nods, reaching blindly for the shower curtain.

They end up on the bath mat, Willas leaning against the cold porcelain of the tub, Sansa straddling his lap.  He sucks a bruise on her collarbone as she grinds down on his lap, and he can feel heat and warmth whenever she brushes over him.  He continues to move his fingers against her, reveling in the way that her body seems to tense like a bow-string, her breath caught in her teeth before she snaps, head coming to rest on his shoulder as she shudders her release.  He does it again, even though he knows they don’t have the time.  Sansa buries her cries in his shoulder, teeth biting down against the tender flesh.  He doesn’t care about the bruise, just cares about the trembling girl in his arms. He would tell her he loves her now, because Willas thinks he just might, because no one has ever made him feel the way that she does now, or before, or possibly ever again.

Sansa straightens in his arms, brushes her hair back from her face.   Her body is flushed and he wants to kiss the entire length of it, every single bit of pink against that cool paleness that he so loves, but she is insistent.  She takes him, strokes him, watches as he tips his head back with a sigh.  He’s more than ready and when he looks at her again, she knows. He looks behind her, at the cabinet, and she understands, opening the drawer until she finds the foil packet.

They move in sync, her hips rolling into his, her breath in time with him, her moans trapped in his mouth.  There’s something hypnotic about the way that her body moves but he doesn’t want to stop kissing her so he makes a note to revisit this thought in the future, maybe in his bedroom.  Before he can think too much, he’s coming, his hips jolting upward, his fingers circling her nub until he can feel her spasm around him, too, a quiet exhale on her lips.

Sated, Willas kisses Sansa again, her lips soft and probably swollen from so much kissing but he can’t help it, he wants to kiss her forever and a day and never stop.  Eventually she pulls back, sliding her leg over his. 

“Does your leg hurt?” she asks.  For the first time, Willas thinks about his leg.  She never mentioned it before, and there’s a slow warmth growing in him when he thinks that maybe Sansa doesn’t care at all about his injury.  He moves it.

“It’s fine,” he tells her.  Sansa smiles, and falls back softly onto the cool tile floor.  Behind them the shower still runs. 

“Might need to still wash up,” he tells her with a smile.  “I don’t feel particularly clean right now.”

The smile that he gets in return is downright cruel.

When Margaery complains about cold water when she takes her shower that morning, Willas doesn’t really give a damn.  Sansa is holding his hand under the kitchen table and all is right with the world.


End file.
